[Seth Says] Do the Needful
It's the hot new dance trend that's sweeping the nation! Do the Needful!
Well, okay, it's not sweeping the nation. (For that matter, it's not even a hot new dance trend.) (Sorry for lying a bunch and then presenting a travesty of dancing; I realize this isn't a Trump town hall.) If anything, it's easy to become dismayed by just how many people aren't doing the needful, especially those in charge. Sometimes looking for someone who is seems like... finding a needful in a haystack.
Still, we find ourselves at yet another precipice, and in order to get people in government who will do the needful, it falls to us to do the needful sometime in the next two weeks, specifically voting for people who seem likely to care about the well-being of all their constituents, rather than writing off vast swaths of people as not-people who deserve harm for being the wrong (race/gender/nationality/sexuality/religion/financial status/blood type)
I have a mail-in ballot on the table in the next room which I plan to fill out this weekend, but whether you're mailing in a vote now, going to vote early in person (recommended!), going to vote on election day, or going to vote after election day (not recommended!), I hope that we can make our voices heard to elect people who will hear everyone's voices, which I realize is a bit circular but the alternative is pretty dire. (imagine blushing dire wolf batting eyelashes)
NECESSARY POETRY
In a welcome shift of topic (if not theme), I have two new poems up on Mecella.
I feel it necessary to mention that in the Linear Time poem, "important, retroactively" is NOT its own line and is actually part of the line above it (which I know sounds like a tiny textwrap formatting issue but you'll see why it matters).
The second poem is, appropriately, about Necessities. And certainly one's concept of what qualifies as a necessity can evolve quite rapidly, especially if you're in a situation where you realize that health is a necessity and most everything else isn't.
HEALTH NEEDS COMEDY
Although my first comedy tape was Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First?", and my first stand-up comedy cassette was Adam Sandler's "They're All Gonna Laugh At You!", my first stand-up comedy CD was Dennis Leary's album "No Cure For Cancer", which included a bit that has stuck in my mind for some years:
"Remember Jim Fixx? The big famous jogging guy? Jogged fifteen miles a day. Did a jogging book. Did a jogging video. Dropped dead of a heart attack when? When he was fucking jogging, that's when!"
Perhaps this ingrained in the back of my mind somewhere that while exercise may be valuable, it's often even more valuable to try to avoid medical conditions that will kill you. Because in spite of the many (many!) ways in which I've failed to take care of my body, my average health remains higher than it would have been had I exercised more and eaten better and lived a more virtuous life but also caught Covid half a dozen times. (In some ways this seems patently unfair, but that's life.)(Also, can you get a patent for unfairness? Maybe someone already did but Elon Musk bought the patent and now he's going to tank the company.)(Unless the company is based around impending tanking.)(Would that be Patton Pending?)
COVID'S METAMORPHOSES
I know that many of my friends and family, including many of you who read this newsletter, think that my level of caution/avoidance around Covid is extreme, and do not want to hear me rattle on about the increased rate of heart attacks and strokes from long covid, or all that other negative stuff. And as a reader of this newsletter, you are the people in the world MOST likely to want to hear me ramble on about things! Everyone else wants to hear that even less, which is why I thought I'd stop complaining and use this week's column to bring you:
15 Great Things About COVID
There may, admittedly, be a modicum of sarcasm in this column. I wouldn't put it past me. (I mean, it was past me, but present me still thinks it's funny, and future me will appreciate future you having read it.)(Wow, that was tense.)
HELLO, I NEEDS BE GOING
That about wraps it up for this edition of "All I need is health, food, and Internet." (not health food, to be clear; I need copious amounts of cheese.)(Also, the Beatles clearly underestimated the number of things you all you need, but then again, the Internet hadn't been invented yet.)(We all live in a yellow submarine sandwich.)
I'll stop Rutle-ing on, and thank you for reading, will be back in two weeks with another column, and may you all enjoy the fall weather when you go out and vote (for hopefully not a fall).
Necessarily,
Seth